mise-en-scéne of our trailer

the mise-en-scene within our trailer and movie was fairly evident in my opinion. there includes a lot of make-up and props which our character cast use. we also had the antagonist wear a trench coat, and have a horse mask, although we did originally want a hockey mask for it, we decided to use a horse mask instead, partially because of lack of resources but also because a horse mask would add to comedic humor. this added to the sinister element of our movie, as it can be quite scary seeing a giant horse-masked killer on the loose chasing our main protagonist who is quite helpless. with any horror film the main protagonist is meant to be fierce and able to deal with the horrors of the antagonist in some way shape or form. while of course as said above our protagonist isn't able to do this and gets completely overwhelmed, however this isn't that clear in the trailer, but we did this to entice the audience further and crate a enigma, this would be similar more so of post-modern stereotypical films and performances.

the Mise-en-scene of our trailer also shows and suggests different aspects such as the dark setting of the background and the lighting putting a huge emphasis on violence, fear and negative aspects of our film, which adheres to the conventions and codes of the horror genre, as we know for a fact that horror films are usually very unpleasant, therefore our mise-en-scene show this as much as possible.

genre of our trailer

3. The genre of our trailer is pre-dominantly a horror-type movie, we chose this for our a2 media production, early for our as we did a action-theme movie trailer, we changed it in a2 perhaps because it was easier, and we also found it more interesting and comedic to work with. On top of that we already had indebt knowledge about elements of horror and horror movies as we had watched a fair amount so we picked up on ideas quickly and early on. also the horror genre codes and conventions are easy to appeal to with a teenage target audience, as our group were teens we would be able to elate and be able to do a horror movie most effectively, even though typically the events that occur in a horror movie don't really occur in real-life.

another reason perhaps why we chose horror was also because it was one which was easy to score high-marks in as most of the stuff you could include didn't have to be any location too far away for example and we chose to make do with what we had in general. For example initially we were planning to do the filming in some abandoned hospital in London, however we changed this afterwards to the oxshott scout huts because it would be easier and more efficient to film there, we got a lot of footage there, with good camera shots and angles. we conveyed it to the audience by adding in the effects which would adhere to the audience, such as dark-lighting, sinister and ambient music, and a antagonist who is tall and intimidating compared to the others.

what makes our production differ

the things which make our production differ, is that we decided to include some unique plot lines and props, which would both adhere to the horror genre, but at the same time it would be unique to our production. we also mainly focused on having a Friday the 13th themed story line. since we have a protagonist who is constantly running away from  the main antagonist it is rather humorous because he can be killed anytime if the antagonist wills it, therefore in most films the protagonist would have some degree of resistance, this isn't evident in our production. the antagonist has unique props such as a horse mask which we used for some degree of comedic humor and a machete which he uses to kill the protagonist, but again this isn't made obvious. through this we created a genuine enigma, so that the target audience will be mind-boggled about what to expect, and even possibly create fear through that reaction. generally people who had crated a A2 trailer, had gone for ghostly possession and more sinister stuff, and while although our trailer was by no means comedic or child-friendly, it still had humor and bits where there were inside jokes between our group.

also we got a particularly tall friend to play the role of the main antagonist, this made the role seem even more intimidating but at the same time funny and humorous because of the stark contrast, it seems as though the protagonist as no chance whatsoever. the alterations between our trailer and others are significant in my opinion because it shows we went the extra distance to add in different effects which would make it unique and all the more fun to watch.

Male gaze theory

2. within our trailer we did not really use the male gaze theory, this is because the main genre of our film is a horror film. therefore we didn't really include scenes which male particularly adult male audiences would appeal to and enjoy. the main reason we did this was because it was a horror movie, therefore there were certain aspects which we felt wouldn't appeal to or relate to the horror genre in anyway, including such scenes which would relate to the male gaze theory, we felt wouldn't work, also none of our cast are female to begin with, therefore it wouldn't be within our resources and achievable to do.

the role of women historically within  films from a heterosexual male's point of view has been described as being the "male" gaze theory, this adds to the fact that women are portrayed as there to be sexualised and desired by men, therefore the camera sometimes zooms in on female body parts of desire such as breasts. also our trailer was fairly short and meant for educational purposes of course so putting in such stuff would be irrelevant to the task at hand. also the male gaze theory is used for adult male target audiences, whereas we aimed our trailer although we did say a variety of target audiences our main aim was to please and adhere to teenage audiences, so it wouldn't fit in with the codes and conventions.

however if we had used elements of the male gaze theory then perhaps it would have added to the appeal of our horror trailer. it would add elements of sexual enticement for the audience, and add different variety to the age rating of our trailer, for example instead of being a 16+ it might be a over 18 type movie.

uses and gratifications

Audience and genre:

1. the uses and gratifications that our trailer appeals to are predominantly the need for escapism and the need to be entertained. the need for escapism mainly because our trailer is a horror genre trailer therefore the typical events that take place and occur during horror films are almost unheard of in real life, this appeals to our intended target audience because our target audience are mainly teenagers, and this means that they would be able to identify with the actors in our trailer, and relate to them, one of the members of our group does taekwondo, so he can knock out and decapitate the antagonist at any time, however in our trailer, we make it so that he is placed in a vulnerable position, this is so that our trailer further appeals to our target audience who are teenagers, we also constructed it by making it so that our location and setting was all of which eerie and ambient, this adds a enigma to the audience and further appeals to the use of needing to escape from the daily lives, as people watching it might think that they would never travel to a dangerous location such as that so they can watch and enjoy all from the safety of their home. our trailer may also spark debates or questions as to what our props were used, this in turns adheres to the uses because people will not be able to identify with our props because of how we used props which had to suit a horror film, but of which were not necessarily "normal", for example we used a horse mask.

Film diary part 1

film diary part 2

Evaluation task 5

Kill Bill Analysis film poster

Movie Title

*Using conventions from real media texts

Using conventions from real media texts:

our media product, I,e our trailer uses forms and conventions of real media products because our trailer is first and foremost a action-adventure themed trailer. This therefore means typically it would adhere to the conventions of any other action-adventure themed genre, for example we had many fast-paced shots in there, close-up shots of the protagonists face, shots of both the drug-lord antagonists and them running away. as well as that our media product challenges forms and conventions of real media products, because our trailer is set in England, and most action-adventure movies in the real world which have a lot of success typically are American, this is because most successful directors are also American, also our trailer challenges it because normally there are special effects involved, in ours we decided not to induce much special effects and keep it simple yet effective.

they have used and developed conventions from real media products by using action-fight scenes, we decided to utilise these first by looking at a tutorial of fighting-scenes and how to introduce them effectively within a trailer, most real action movies have fight scenes, in fact this is very much a staple, and must have some form of fighting for it to be considered a action. we decided to include a crime element on top of that - another feature which a lot of action films seem to have at the present, they all have some element of the antagonist being a drug lord, or being related to crime in some way, shape or form.

However whilst our trailer has used conventions from real action movies, it has also gone against it and challenged it, this is shown by the fact that we decided not to include car chase scenes, and very difficult effects to introduce such as explosions, for safety reasons obviously we could not include such effects at all, so this was out of the question. Nevertheless car chases and explosions are usually a key part of real life action-adventure films at some points, usually to involve a huge plot binding the protagonist against the antagonist. though perhaps not always.

Our work is to a degree both generic and experimental. Because our plot and story line was sort of experimental, we included a lot of comical elements, such as one of the main characters "filthy" frank being the same name as a comedic, hilarious you tuber. one of our friends who was in our group also was interested in joining the military so we decided to include a military element to it, so one of the characters "Andrew McGregor", is supposed to be ex-military and is getting involved with drugs supposedly for the enjoyment of adrenalin and action. in general we have not been influenced by the work of specific directors either because we decided to make the trailer mostly based on our ideas without much influence.

we significantly developed these skills at a2, this is because at a2 we had to up our game and make it so that the plot was original, but this time we actually decided to take inspiration from movies, we got inspiration from a famous thriller called Friday the 13th. we decided to include elements from it to our trailer during our A2 media production, this worked well, and had we included some elements from a real movie during our AS, then we would have had more success from the start we also developed our skills by using and utilizing a variety more of cuts, camera angles and different shots all of which worked very well and effectively.

*Post-Production

Post Production:

from our audience feedback we learned of a couple of things which would help if we did any media productions in the future, firstly our trailer clip was far too short, we could have got a lot more footage in, and make our clip longer, therefore appealing to the audience better, and gaining more success as a result. Also we should have included some form of dialogue within our trailer- none of the characters spoke in our trailer, this was mostly because we felt it wasn't that important however in hindsight perhaps this was a stupid mistake, and we could rectify it by giving the characters some dialogue and lines. also we learned that we could have given our titles a different font style, this could have enticed the audience further and make it so that it would suggest that our trailer was no ordinary average trailer and that it was something special.

we made different editing decisions, during our production stage, for example we opted to make our trailer light, but some of the footage we got in the morning and the rest of the footage was shot in the late evening to night-time, so this was a dilemma. we also opted during our editing that we would make a lot of fast-paced action shots for our trailer, because in action movies this is suitable because the target audience want fast-paced action scenes to entice them and actually make them want to see the full movie. these decisions informed the production by making us more weary and conscious about the effects and what they did to our trailer, we experimented with different effects such as the lighting, the camera angles and the sound, and chose what we thought would be ideal for this.

The main editing tool we used was adobe Photoshop, this was because we could edit different images and background, layers and font in the most efficient way possible for a magazine cover or poster. We used adobe premier elements for any footage editing, this was the main one we used and was better than Photoshop, because it was easier to put together clips and make cuts.

overall the post-production process enhanced our production by a significant amount. This was because we were made aware of the different shortcomings some effects could have and which effects would be most suited to adhere to the conventions of our action-themed trailer.

we have developed these skills even further at A2, Because of our experiences during our AS media production, we knew which effect would be better and why. For example we chose to do a horror-themed genre film trailer during our A" for this dark lighting, and ambient spooky music would be best, with subtle hints of dark violence in our trailer, This worked effectively and efficiently.

Creativity*

Creativity:
Last year we ended up doing a action film, which we called addiction, this was generally about car chases, actions, drug deals gone wrong and involved part of our story about a ex-soldier called Andrew Macgregor. we used the action media form last year, while this year we decided to do something more challenging like horror. Last year generally we got the ideas from people we met outside of college, and different movies, and media we have watched over the various years as well as recently.  ideas also came about from other media sources such as this particular anime called Mirrai Nikki, where we see psychotic girl stalking a helpless boy, and this became a huge part of our plot during our A2 production, however in as we decided a action movie, therefore we had these ideas afterwards.

we worked collaboratively because we all have different interests we would get talking about each of our favourite movies or shows for example, and we put some of the main ideas from those films together. This would make up a base of our trailer. we would also brainstorm these ideas, so we actually knew what the ideas for the trailer were about, and made sure it would actually work how we wanted it to work. another one of the members in our group also made sure we had the props required to pull the trailer off, one such prop included a horse mask, we had wanted to include a mask more suitable such as a hockey mask but we had to make do with it.

we changed things by adding a lot more eeriness to our trailer, whilst last year we had to include almost drama, fighting and comical violence, therefore the differences are obvious. we also decided to add different music, throughout the background to it, also we decided to take different camera shots and angles throughout, this was so that a different effect could be added throughout in comparison to last year's film. we also decided to actually add more titles in the trailer, since in the first one we barely had any and the one we did was absolutely terrible. so we added titles our own coming soon title and the names of the actors and director.

we used adobe premier elements to make the footage quality better, we edited in clips of our footage and we included short cuts and long cuts, and we would make it relatively short. we also used adobe premier elements to change the lighting around, in our first media production the lighting changed from light to dark, this was a mistake, we made sure to rectify this in our second, as it was dark all of the time.

in terms of page layout, our choices made sure that our credits and titles would be dark so as to adhere to the media genre even more so. and appeal to the codes and conventions of the genre, so as to make it more action-packed, this would further entice the audience and want to make them see it more as it would also increase the mystery factor.

*Research and planning

Research and planning

we looked at several different real media and audiences, which would enjoy our trailer so we looked at different horror genre target audiences and things which would adhere to the horror genre as much as possible. we found out earlier by doing a graph of results that most people who enjoyed watching horror movies and movies o the thriller genre, were teenagers or young adults between the ages of 15 to 25. although this is a generalisation it also depends on the personality of the individual. the real media we researched and looked at were means of broadcasting and publishing, this included cinema, television and books, most of the target audiences enjoyed watching movies the most therefore this was the most effective way of real media.

They informed our thinking about media production by taking part in a survey/questionnaire we produced by ourselves, this survey detailed about their interests in different movie genres, when they watched movies, what media they would watch it on, e.g. television, cinema etc. the most popular was cinema. on top of this we recorded what age groups were interested in which genre as well. we found out that the most popular was action-movies. we took this on board when we were deciding about our trailer during our a2 production, however for our as we didn't have as much of a informed decision, although we decided to do a action-film in our as production it didn't have quite the success that our second media production did. during our as production we simply chose to do the genre by which we would find easiest and action therefore meeting this criteria.

the main primary research we did was survey's and questionnaires but were simple and not very detailed enough to make more informed decisions and conclusions. the questionnaire focuses on different age groups, genre and they're interests to do with movie and the different type of genres they enjoyed seeing. we added this to our decisions based around on what sort of props to include, what genre we would make our trailer and above all, what age rating we would make it available for the target audience to watch.

after the primary research we had to do some secondary research to further back up the evidence we had already found, this included some magazine covers, we researched them, and even had to make our own during our a2 media studies. this gave us further information and helped us more.


it helped us and informed the production by finding out what people though adhered to the action-adventure genre, and by finding this out we could make our trailer more effective by making it suit the wants and needs of our intended target audience. the secondary research was perhaps more effective than the primary research. This was most likely because it went into more detail and we looked at real-life media forms and became more conceptual and understanding of human behaviour.

we employed different qualitative and quantitative research methods during our data process, for example our questionnaire would be quantitative, as we were using and collecting data to measure things, by asking the participants. we also had qualitative methods such as we had interviews with different participants as well. the effectiveness of these methods were very effective as it went into depth about the participants, their behaviour and why they would choose a certain genre of movie over another. and overall we have developed these skills much further at a2 because we went into a lot more detail and depth when we did it at a2, for example we took the results during a2 and made sure to compare it and collect the data and actually add it more frequently.